


light the sky and hold on tight

by kurage_hime



Category: Sunny Came Home - Shawn Colvin (Song)
Genre: Childhood Sexual Abuse, Gen, Incest, Inspired by Music, Pyromania, Revenge
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-25
Updated: 2019-05-25
Packaged: 2020-01-05 12:11:29
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,073
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18365762
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kurage_hime/pseuds/kurage_hime
Summary: Sunny dreams of fire.





	light the sky and hold on tight

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Missy](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Missy/gifts).



Sunny dreams of fire.

During the daytime, she tries her best not to remember her dreams; she knows what damage the flames can do. No one born and raised in the Ardeni Valley, Sunny included, would dare make light of that.

But. _But_. When, in the darkest part of the night, when the owls hoot in the trees and the door to her bedroom creaks open and the weight of her father’s body settles above her, against her, _inside her_ , she closes her eyes and flies out of her mind…

…into the fire.

 

* * *

 

They call it the Ardeni Valley Fire.

The initial spark had been a mistake, a venal act of carelessness. Someone’s improperly supervised backyard BBQ that had gotten out of control.

Everybody had been so careless back then.

The fire had grown with the wind, roaring down the dry hills and into the drought ridden valley like hell’s own righteous fury. That it skirted most of the town center was God’s own small act of mercy.

Several houses built along the western ridge were in its path and reduced to so much ash, though. The fire spared Sunny’s family’s house with its commanding hilltop views by mere feet.

Her mother had not been so lucky. She’d come down from the house and into town to look for Sunny and the kids. She didn’t know that they’d already been sent to a designated community shelter. They were safe and sound – as was their father with his work colleagues – but she didn’t know that.

She died when the flames cut her off at the underpass. Her funeral did not feature an open casket. Sunny doesn’t feel like she got to say goodbye.

 

* * *

 

In her dream, her mother burns. She is cloaked in red and orange and gold, and she wears a crown of fire, but she is never consumed.

Whenever Sunny tries runs forward to meet her, arms outstretched, she always flickers and fades away.

 

* * *

 

After school lets out, Sunny stops over at the neighborhood pharmacy to pick up her birth control prescription. She wants to take it for one more month at least, just to be sure.

“Acne, eh?” the pharmacist remarks as she hands Sunny a little box containing its blister pack of pills. “It must really work. Your skin is as beautiful as your mother’s.”

“Well, it wouldn’t be if I weren’t taking these religiously.” Sunny shrugs lightly. “What can I say? Teenagers are vain.”

 _You know_ , Sunny thinks, peering into the pharmacist’s watery blue irises. _You._ Know _. Yet you do nothing. Either that, or you work very, very hard_ not _to know. The rot came to your town, and you averted your gaze. Now the rot is inside of you too. You’re on my list_.

Her mother had been younger than Sunny is now when she’d gotten pregnant with Sunny. The mother, a high school student. The father, her ninth grade English teacher. He married her, of course.

“Have a nice day, dear! Give my best to your father!” the pharmacist calls out from behind the counter.

Sunny’s father doesn’t teach English anymore. He has become the principal of Ardeni High School. He’s one of the most well-regarded, highly respected men in town, if not the county, the state, the entire damn country. They say his pioneering, student-centered educational reforms are being implemented internationally.

Sunny leaves the pharmacy for the last time without saying goodbye.

Power, Sunny has learnt, is an architecture that reconstructs reality in order to protect those who do not deserve protection. The weak are kept outside its high walls and left to suffer. She wants to burn that fortress of power down.

 

* * *

 

Her father starts on Sunny when she is ten. Her mother has been dead for four years. The kids are six and seven years old, respectively. She’s already started menstruating; the doctors say that stress and childhood trauma are risk factors for the early onset of puberty.

It hurts horribly the first time, the pain, scraping and tearing, like burning. But he persists until a Sunny feels a different kind of fire explode within her – a heady, shameful flush of heat.

Being made to orgasm is like being set on fire. She is a witch being burned at the stake.

“My beautiful girl,” her father says, “you make me feel so good. I make you feel good too, don’t I? This can be our little secret. Don’t tell anyone. If you tell anyone, you’ll lose me like you lost your mother.”

He helps Sunny get a prescription for birth control, coaches her as to what to say to the doctor. It’s all lies. The kids still don’t know; they’re still a bit too young for him.

The tension winds tighter and tighter and tighter, like a wire ready to snap and slash and whip somebody bloody. Sunny walks that tightrope every waking moment of her life. Flames lick at her heels, but she does not dare look down into the inferno.

She’s scared, so scared. Then fear becomes normal, until it ceases to be fear, and Sunny realizes she isn’t afraid anymore.

After that, she starts making plans.

 

* * *

 

She waits until after her father is finished with her for the night. He always sleeps most soundly afterwards.

They don’t call it “drought” anymore. The dry climate has become a permanent state of affairs in the Ardeni Valley. The storms like tonight’s bring thunder and lightning, and wind, but no rain. It’s become normal; people have grown careless again. When Sunny lights her fire, the blaze will roll down the hill like an avalanche, like the righteous release of her rage, and it will take Sunny’s family’s house, and it will take the town. She’s made absolutely certain of that.

The ones on her list, they’re none of them innocent.

The kids don’t see her strike the match. She won’t put that on them. But they’re with her, and they’re warm in their best wool yarn sweaters, and they’re safely upwind from what’s to come.

As the sky fills with a blaze of light, the tension of years seems to release itself. She’d thought the Ardeni Valley would look like a hellscape, but from this far vantage point, high up on the western ridge, facing east, it almost looks like daybreak. A new dawn. Her mother’s face is smiling at her from the flames.

In that moment, Sunny knows that she’ll be all right.


End file.
